Like many websites and blogs, we will participating in the blackout. This is not a time to say nothing, but instead to put aside things that can wait and focus energy on helping those in need. To that end, I have posted some links and reading recs here, and I hope others will contribute as well.

No Umineko this week because I’ve been huddled in a ball weeping finishing up my final papers, but y’all are apparently more interested in dry books about other books than I thought, so here’s some of my favorite stuff I read for research this past semester!

edit: Fuck, I forgot one! Read everything Ayanna Thompson has ever written about Othello, especially her introduction to the Arden edition of the play.

I don’t typically talk about all the academic books I read here (though… is that something people want?), but I bought this for a research project a month ago and I’m still irritated about it so I’m unloading on you instead of poor Mr. Act, who has his own shit going on.

This post is really a lesson about due diligence and the necessity of academic presses, for all their flaws.

Sacred Stones, FE8, is the third and final GBA Fire Emblem. It’s one of those games where, while I didn’t dislike it, I’m also not sure the circumstances under which I’d recommend it. Maybe like if someone said, “I love the Fire Emblem series but haven’t yet played Sacred Stones, should I?” The answer to that is probably yes. Beyond that, it’s was just so bland it’s hard to really work up enthusiasm for it.

Blazing Blade was localized simply as “Fire Emblem”, because it was the first FE game to officially come West. I wondered, playing this game, if it was a coincidence that the first FE they bothered to send to English speakers was far and away the best one, or if they knew they had a real gem on their hands and were like, “This shit is how we get American’s money.”

Blazing Blade, FE7, is technically the prequel to FE6, but not only do you not have to play FE6 to understand it, I’d go as far as to say you shouldn’t play FE6, since FE7 is so much better that it kind of sets FE6 up as disappointing. The entire plot also causes the plot of FE6 to make zero sense.

Unforutnately I waited too long to write this review and don’t remember nearly as much about FE7 as I should, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it justice. But this was a really great game, and I heartily rec it. Like I said, it’s far and away the best of the first 7 FEs. It’s not even close.

Hello hello hello my dears! I hope you are all staying indoors. Mr. Act (who is asthmatic) and I (who is without an immune system) are both high-risk and terrified. Every time you think about going out, consider that you might kill me, and maybe reconsider. Or don’t, depending on why you’re reading this.

Anyway, quaran-time has actually has a wonderful effect on my health. I mean, I’m going crazy and getting no vitamin D, but Mr. Act is home all the time, I’m cooking and cleaning because I’m not exhausted by work, and reduced workloads in class mean I can like, read and write for fun? It’s weird.

So, looking over the myriad of things I have in drafts, I thought this would be a good one to push out, because Verdant Skies is a really interesting game that’s actually not that good but I put 30 hours into it anyway for a few reasons. The gameplay is really pretty shitty but it has some wonderful ideas and mechanisms and perhaps most importantly for our typical reader, it’s really committed to making a farm sim that goes above and beyond in terms of race and gender. If those things are important to you this is definitely worth checking out, but if you need high polish and deep gameplay first and foremost it’s probably not for you.

Pulling back a bit though, this is a futuristic space colony farm sim.